Interviews: Ask Social Network Minds.com CEO and Founder Bill Ottman a Question 84
As you may have noticed, Facebook is not cool anymore. The social juggernaut has been mired in controversies -- infamous privacy scandals or the company's ruthless "grow fast and break things" approach to gain users, to name a few. Luckily enough, some people are trying to build new social networks and are coming up with interesting original ideas. Minds.com is one such social network.
The open source social network, which has been operational since 2012, works on a point-earning/exchange system to give users full control over the reach of their posts. One of the complaints people have with Facebook and Twitter is that they feel their posts are not being seen by all of their friends. Minds.com lets users earn points and then trade those points to boost their posts on the platform. Users earn tokens by being active on the platform and engaging in uploading, voting, commenting and other similar activities. They can then use these tokens, which can be exchanged within the platform, to boost the reach of their posts. The company last year launched a cryptocurrency reward program based on the ethereum blockchain for all users on the platform. Minds says it does not determine what should be censored. Users are free to post whatever they want. (You can follow us on Minds.)
We are excited to announced that Minds founder and chief executive Bill Ottman has agreed to do an interview with us. If you have a question about Minds.com for him or his take on the current social networking space, feel free to ask it in the comments section below.
The open source social network, which has been operational since 2012, works on a point-earning/exchange system to give users full control over the reach of their posts. One of the complaints people have with Facebook and Twitter is that they feel their posts are not being seen by all of their friends. Minds.com lets users earn points and then trade those points to boost their posts on the platform. Users earn tokens by being active on the platform and engaging in uploading, voting, commenting and other similar activities. They can then use these tokens, which can be exchanged within the platform, to boost the reach of their posts. The company last year launched a cryptocurrency reward program based on the ethereum blockchain for all users on the platform. Minds says it does not determine what should be censored. Users are free to post whatever they want. (You can follow us on Minds.)
We are excited to announced that Minds founder and chief executive Bill Ottman has agreed to do an interview with us. If you have a question about Minds.com for him or his take on the current social networking space, feel free to ask it in the comments section below.
New Social Media or No Social Media? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: New Social Media or No Social Media? (Score:1)
So burn Slashdot to the ground?
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Is anybody here really looking for a new social media site to join?
Sure. I would like a SM site that provides a simple forum for group discussions with friends, families, and interest groups, without all the noise and distractions.
But Minds.com doesn't sound like that. Their point system encourages "activity" (quantity over quality) including reposts, voting, sharing links, etc. The very things that have turned Facebook into a cesspool. There will soon be bots auto-posting crap to build up points.
It looks like they used Facebook as a baseline, and figured out a way to
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Is anybody here really looking for a new social media site to join?
Sure. I would like a SM site that provides a simple forum for group discussions with friends, families, and interest groups, without all the noise and distractions.
But Minds.com doesn't sound like that. Their point system encourages "activity" (quantity over quality) including reposts, voting, sharing links, etc. The very things that have turned Facebook into a cesspool. There will soon be bots auto-posting crap to build up points.
It looks like they used Facebook as a baseline, and figured out a way to make it worse.
Maybe go back to blogs or host your own forum/photo album site?
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It does sound like a bit of a nightmare... People are worried that their "friends" are not bothering to look at their posts, so demand ways of bribing them.
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I think I See a Possible Flaw. (Score:5, Interesting)
users earn points and then trade those points to boost their posts on the platform.
Karma points will have a real effect and people will soon find a way to trade them for real money. People with loadsamoney will then arrive and use this black market to gain influence.
Users earn tokens by being active on the platform and engaging in uploading, voting, commenting and other similar activities
Power Users earn loadsatokens by spamming reposted crap from reddit/4chan/facebook, and then adding a sprinkling of top voted comments from previous reposts and finally brigading the shit out of it with voting bots.
Power Users will then convert tokens into money with sponsorships or just plain old grift.
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Karma points will have a real effect and people will soon find a way to trade them for real money. People with loadsamoney will then arrive and use this black market to gain influence.
Unless you can't trade them and can only use them... but then you need to buy the whole account and... well you loose your name.
Anonymous coward creates account and with bots and shit gets loads of token... then compagny Y buy the account... but it's still Anonymous coward's account.
You are right if account can be renamed... I hope it can't...
Power Users earn loadsatokens by spamming reposted crap from reddit/4chan/facebook, and then adding a sprinkling of top voted comments from previous reposts and finally brigading the shit out of it with voting bots.
Power Users will then convert tokens into money with sponsorships or just plain old grift.
Yeah but if they are not your friend then you still wont see their post.... so just dont make friend with those...
I see what you are trying and I think it's fine.
But t
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Microtransactions and social media, unwanted (Score:5, Interesting)
How many users do you have? (Score:5, Informative)
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How does minds make money? (Score:5, Interesting)
What coins/tokens does Minds use and pay out? (Score:5, Interesting)
What kind of feedback have you received? (Score:5, Interesting)
Market fetishism (Score:1)
The philosophy is neoliberalism or "market fetishism". That is to say, believing markets have properties that they don't actually have.
Internet comments don't work according to market dynamics. Money from outside of the ecosystem will flood the system with commercial spam.
Subjectively "good" comments which are insightful, interesting, funny, even subversive or anti-establishment, aren't commercially valuable.
What happens when you get a big offer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Minds vs Steemit (Score:5, Insightful)
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Reddit (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't this basically just Reddit with crypto?
Question for Mr Ottman (Score:5, Interesting)
What will prevent Minds.com from becoming the next facebook? I mean do you have things or procedure or guideline in place to prevent your site to become a Capitalist dominated data aggregation tool for those who have money to use as a tool to control/subdue the mass? What will prevent minds of being taken over by a CA or Board that will dictate new rules aimed at making minds the next facebook?
Quantity vs Quality (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot moderation system (Score:5, Insightful)
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Bill, is that you?
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I don't agree. There's an question in the air about whether the social media world needs to slap the hand of one giant bad apple (Facebook), or seriously retrench from a failed, life-destroying technology across the board.
If not Facebook, then what else? And so you interview the "what else" contenders in single file.
Silly response: Who's ever even heard of network x not equal to Facebook?
That's ac
How do you address the crypto clueless? (Score:2)
I've noticed that most new social media platforms based on crypto tend to attract crypto people. Steemit for example is so cryptoed up there's almost no one talking about anything else - and that drives people away.
Minds, so far I've liked, it doesn't appear to be a crypto fanatic hangout like other crypto based sites are, but it still has the issue that it's going to confuse grandma and Aunt Postalotacrap. There doesn't seem to be a "friends and family centric" way of doing things, which will prevent it
The pit of the Internet (Score:1)
Are you comfortable that your platform has been largely co-opted by and identified as a safe-haven for alt-right and other racist xenophobes and cyptocurrency scam artists looking to make a quick buck?
The points sound linear, but I'm multidimensional? (Score:5, Interesting)
From the description of your system, it sounds well-intentioned, but... People are not flat one-dimensional objects and it sounds like the point system is flattening people that way. On that basis, I guess I can reduce it to two questions, and then clarify how I wish it would work (in terms of MEPR).
(1) If your points are one-dimensional, then how do you justify reducing people to a single number?
(2) If your points are multidimensional, how do you control the dimensionality?
So now the attempt to clarify the context of my questions... First of all, let me say that there are some aspects of the idea that sound good, even excellent--but ANYTHING sounds good when compared to Facebook.
I think there should be a kind of symmetry between what you do and how you are perceived. MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation) is my current handle for this idea. Essentially the people who do things should earn positive or negative ratings on various dimensions based on what they did, and the things they do should start with positive or negative ratings based on the person who did them.
Here are a few simple example: If a public comment is made by a person who has a track record of lying, then that comment should be tainted with a low score on the dimension of honesty. If a person has frequently made comments that people regard as funny, then that person should have a positive score on the dimensions related to humor. If politeness is less important to me than fresh ideas, I should be able to adjust my input weights accordingly.
In visible terms, I imagine a pair of icons. On the personal side, one would be the personal icon linked to the data that the person chooses to share. The second would be the MEPR icon, a standardized (radar?) image linked to the public behaviors and data that defines the MEPR values. (And it should be an opt-in system, too. If you want to disable your MEPR, you should be able to do so--but on Slashdot I am glad to ignore the ACs and I would also discount actions from people who reject or deny accountability for their public behaviors.)
As usual, I have wandered too far and used too much time, so I must again bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Re:The points sound linear, but I'm multidimension (Score:5, Interesting)
It sounds like a permanent record of down-/up-votes. How is this different to a credit history or a criminal record? Where's the right to be forgotten, or at least, have historical stupidity discounted?
Leaving aside the 'I will mark everything according to how much I like X' scoring, it's still vulnerable to the 'you give me good scores and I will give you good scores' abuse of current reputation systems.
As Fox news and Facebook stories prove, it's easy to tell people they're victims and they need to fight somebody with guns. What prevents morons punishing people who injure their self importance or justify their self-righteousness? What prevents the ranking system devolving into a Twitter-storm demanding murder and rape?
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Interesting reply. However I wouldn't have seen it at all if it hadn't been moderated strongly into visibility. It really raises some important questions, though not any questions I have not already considered. I think I have substantive answers for your questions, but first you need to convince me I should make an exception to my policy against responding to ACs.
Fix the things that make me hate Facebook (Score:2)
Question: Will minds.com have some means of flexible content-filtering of posts I see?
(Background) I have people on my Facebook friends list with utterly obnoxious political opinions they WILL NOT SHUT UP about. I want their non-political stuff, but I want to **NEVER** see anything of theirs which mentions certain political figures. (Actually, I don't want to see any post of any kind that mentions certain political figures.) Likewise, endless "Lost puppy and kitten" alerts by people living 3000 miles awa
MINDS Token Trading? (Score:5, Interesting)
Questions (Score:5, Interesting)
I know part of the typical business model of social media is selling metadata, have you done away with this because of moving to a crypto-based model or do you use that data for selling as well?
Also, if you do sell that data, what is your data retention policy after a user chooses to leave the platform?
Will Minds adopt an Open Discussion standard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Open Discussion standards are those which protect the user from censorship and deletion of their work on the site. They generally permit removal of illegal material or grossly offensive images and slurs, but do not permit censorship by content type or topic.
Will Minds.com adopt one of these, and if so, will that make it hard for it to become a popular social network since most people "seem" to want a steady stream of inoffensive palaver and kitty pictures instead of substantive issues, debates, articles, discussions, etc.?